Q: What do the St Bernard dogs who rescue stranded travellers at the St Bernard pass in Switzerland carry in the little barrels around their neck?

Forfeit: brandy

A: Nothing. According to monks at the hospice, the dogs have never carried brandy kegs in rescue work. They often pose with the traditional casks for the benefit of visitors. This legend probably dates back to an artist who drew the original Barry (the wonder dog who rescued forty people and was killed by the fortyfirst, who mistook him for a wolf) with a cask simply because he thought it would add interest. The public loved the idea and would not be told otherwise. Ever since the days of Barry the wonder dog, the handsomest dog in the kennel has carried the name of Barry in his honour.

Bonus: Although the dogs do not carry anything, the monks who go with them carry (or at any rate they did in 1957!) a flask of hot tea and wine.

Here it is Jack - posted by Flash, though there doesn't seem to be a source:

Quote:

Quote:
One feature of bees and wasps that is often cited as distinguishing the two is actually a long-standing fallacy.. Mention is frequently made of how a bee will lose its stinger in the flesh of its victim because the barbs ... prevent it from being withdrawn (whereas) the wasp has no barbs, which enables (it) to sting repeatedly. First of all, some wasps do carry barbed stingers ... The major error, however, is including all bees in the distinction... Only the honey bee, which was introduced to the Americas by European settlers, has such a stinger and loses it upon attack ... often ... leading to the the bee's death within a few hours. The bumblebee and other North American bees ... can sting repeatedly, just like the wasp ...

Q: How many points do you have to score to win a game of table tennis?

(forfeit: 21)

A: 11

The rule was changed in July 2003, and it is now against the rules of the English Table Tennis Association to play 21-up. Any club wishing to play 21-up tournaments would have to disaffiliate from the Association in order to do so.

Do you know the difference between a pier and a dock? I didn't. Apparently a pier is the bit that sticks out into the water, and a dock is the water next to the pier, which is why you can have a dry dock - a dock without water in it.

So here's a possible question: Play the refrain of Otis Redding's song 'Sitting on the Dock of the Bay' and ask how it's factually inaccurate.

Once in a blue moon is a common way of saying not very often, but what exactly is a blue moon? Apparently, It is the second full moon to occur in a single calendar month.

The average interval between full moons is about 29.5 days, whilst the length of an average month is roughly 30.5 days. This makes it very unlikely that any given month will contain two full moons, though it does sometimes happen.

On average, there will be 41 months that have two full moons in every century, so you could say that once in a blue moon actually means once every two-and-a-half years.

We tend to use the phrase 'once in a blue moon' to mean 'rarely, if ever', but blue moons are more common than you think. A "blue moon" is just the second full moon in a calendar month and it isn't really blue.

However, there have been truly blue moons. In 1883, after the eruption of Krakatoa, minute particles of ash made the moon appear blue. The particles, only a micron wide, were exactly the right size to scatter red light and allow blue light to pass through. The eruptions of Mount St. Helens and Mount Pinatubo produced the same effects, and giant forest fires have also produced them.

For several years after these eruption, different sized particles filtered other colors and caused different effects, and there were reports from all over the world of red, green and blue moons. The other effect was to produce blazing red sunsets.

The origin of the phrase 'once in a blue moon' is fairly obscure. The phrase is old, even if the modern meaning is not. Shakespeare referred to it, and there were traditional rhymes like:

If they say the moon is blewe,
We must believe that it is true.

In the 19th-century the Maine Farmers' Almanac wrote that a blue moon occurred whenever a season had four full moons instead of three. It was common to give moons seasonal names during this time, so you had harvest moons, fruit moons, and egg moons, too.

In 1946, Sky & Telescope magazine published an article that misinterpreted the Maine almanac's seasonal definition, making the blue moon the second full moon in a month instead of the fourth full moon in a season and this became generally adopted. The 1986 Genus II edition of Trivial Pursuit told everybody that blue moons were the second full moon in a calendar month. They got their information from a 1985 children's book, Facts and Records, but its sources are unknown, though they might have included the magazine's mistaken report.

In 1999, the new definition was impressed on the public mind when there were two full moons in January and March and none at all in February. These were widely reported in the press and stuck even after Sky and Telescope magazine admitted their original error.